What Do Next-Generation Philanthropists in Asia Do Differently?

By the Business & Philanthropy Forum · Published 10 September 2026

They ask for evidence before they commit, they use structures their parents never touched, and they fund causes the previous generation avoided. They also treat data and AI as ordinary working tools rather than a novelty.

The scale behind this is an estimated US$2.5 trillion in family wealth passing to the next generation across Asia by 2030. What gets less attention is the governance change underneath it. In UBS’s billionaire survey a decade ago, 21% of respondents said they involved the next generation in planning. Now 60% do. The handover is not a future event. It is already most of the way through.

This is what changes when it happens, drawn from research across the region and from our own interviews with people going through it.

In short: Next-generation philanthropists in Asia are the children and grandchildren of family-business founders who are now taking over the family’s giving. They differ from the previous generation in four ways. They want measured results rather than gratitude. They use donor-advised funds, impact investing and giving circles instead of only writing cheques. They treat data and AI as standard. And they fund causes their parents largely left alone, including climate, mental health and conservation.

Who counts as a next-generation philanthropist?

Second generation or later in a family that made its money in business. Usually in their twenties to forties. Often educated abroad, frequently working outside the family firm before joining it, and increasingly taking the giving decisions before they take the business ones.

That last part matters more than it sounds. Families hand over the foundation earlier than they hand over the company, because the downside is smaller and the lessons transfer. Philanthropy is where the next generation gets tested. That is why the giving changes before anything else does, and why watching a family’s foundation tells you where the business is heading.

This is a different group from young donors in general. The money is inherited rather than earned, the time horizon runs decades rather than years, and the decisions get made inside a family, with everything that implies about deference, disagreement and who holds the pen.

What changed: from writing cheques to running a portfolio

1. Governance moved firstResearch in Stanford Social Innovation Review found next-generation Asian philanthropists preferring collegial and managerial governance over the patriarchal model they inherited, and far more open to social enterprise and social-value investment. UBS’s own numbers show how fast this went: from 21% of surveyed billionaires involving the next generation in planning a decade ago to 60% today.
2. The unit of work got biggerThe older pattern was funding a project: a school block, a clinic, a scholarship. The newer pattern is funding a system: policy, private sector and non-profits treated as one interconnected problem rather than three separate asks. This is the change the sector calls ecosystem thinking, and it is the reason next-gen givers frustrate charities that arrive with a single well-costed project.
3. Involvement replaced attendanceThe gala dinner is losing to smaller, working formats. Site visits, structured learning programmes, direct contact with the people running the work. Passive funding is out of fashion with this generation almost everywhere it has been surveyed.

The US$2.5 trillion handover, and why the timing matters

The handover, in three numbers

An estimated US$2.5 trillion in family wealth passes to the next generation in Asia by 2030. The Asia Philanthropy Circle uses the figure and so does most of the sector.

It is quoted so often that it has stopped meaning much, so here is the part that matters. The decisions are being made now, not in 2030. Someone inheriting at the end of this decade is choosing causes, building networks and forming views today, and by the time the money legally moves those views will be settled. If you run an organisation hoping for some of it, the relationship starts years before the transfer does. Most fundraising plans are aimed at a later date than they should be.

Poppy Zidan Chen, a next-generation changemaker at the very start of her career, is early in exactly that process. Her stated plan is to visit five new countries a year and build real expertise in sustainability, which she treats as a problem spanning economics, policy, technology and human behaviour, on the view that you cannot fix a system you only half understand. Preparation, in other words, is the job at this stage.

They want proof, not thank-you letters

This is the sharpest break with the previous generation, and the one most charities have not adjusted to.

Nishtha Agarwal, a next-generation leader from a family of Indian textile manufacturers who now advises charities on winning support from ultra-wealthy donors, is blunt about what those families assess:

“Vague promises don’t work — UHNW donors want proof of outcomes, not just intent or activity.”

Alignment comes first: does the mission match what the family already believes. Then precision about the problem. Then evidence. An organisation that is heavy on administration, or thin on transparency, gets dropped early, and usually without being told why.

If you are fundraising, this changes what you send and when. Bring the number that shows the work moved, not the number of people served. Show who you helped, not what you do. Report between asks rather than only during them, because the reporting is now the relationship. And expect due diligence that looks more like an investment process than a grant application.

The vehicles they use

This is the practical question, and almost nothing written about this generation answers it. Four structures, and which one a family picks says a great deal about what they are trying to do.

Four structures, and what choosing one says

Donor-advised funds. A giving account held at a sponsoring organisation. The family puts money in, takes the tax treatment at that point, and recommends grants out over time. Assets can be invested while they wait. This is the fastest-growing vehicle globally and it is gaining in Singapore, where the Community Foundation of Singapore operates them and the Economic Development Board has published a guide to them jointly with the Wealth Management Institute and the Private Banking Industry Group. The appeal for a next-generation family is specific: you get a real budget and real decisions without the board, the staff and the annual filings that come with a foundation. Low stakes, genuine authority. It is the obvious first structure to hand a 28-year-old.

Impact investing and blended finance.UBS describes next-generation givers as blurring the line between philanthropy and investing, weighing risk, return and impact together rather than treating the first two as the business and the third as the conscience. In practice that means instruments like income-share agreements and blended-finance structures, where philanthropic money takes the first loss so commercial capital will come in behind it. The Wealth Management Institute reports the same movement across Asia, with donor-advised funds, foundations, impact investing and blended finance all moving into common use.

You can see the blur in who this generation becomes. Radhika Bajoria, a 25-year-old investor who founded Radically Yours, a cross-border platform backing women-led firms, runs chapters in Singapore, London, Sweden and India. She was one of eleven Indian fellows on the UN Foundation’s Next Generation India Fellowship. That is not a foundation and she would not call it philanthropy, but the thesis, the patience and the willingness to fund what conventional capital overlooks are the same. Twenty years ago this person would have started a grant programme.

Giving circles and co-funding. Pooling money with peers and deciding together. For an heir this solves two problems at once: it spreads risk across people who are learning at the same time, and it supplies the peer network that families cannot manufacture internally. Collaborative platforms are now a normal part of the Asian landscape rather than a novelty. The Asia Philanthropy Circle is the obvious example.

The family foundation. Still the endpoint for families who need permanence, staff and a name that outlives them. It is also the slowest to set up, the most expensive to run, and the easiest to hand over in title while withholding it in substance.

AI and data: both a tool and a cause

Nobody else writing about this generation covers this properly, which is odd, because it is the most concrete difference between them and their parents.

A tool, a cause, and now a subject

As a tool, the use is mostly unglamorous: measurement, reporting, due diligence, donor communication. Nishtha Agarwal makes the point on the fundraising side, describing digital transformation so that giving is seamless, campaigns built on WhatsApp and Instagram rather than gala dinners, and micro-communities and niche creators instead of mass appeals. Poppy Zidan Chen describes AI as a tool to amplify her impact and treats fluency in it as a requirement rather than an advantage.

As a cause, it is newer and more interesting. Poppy names AI itself as something philanthropy now has to fund the consequences of: automation is displacing jobs faster than retraining programmes are being built, and she wants money going into accessible reskilling. That is a next-generation funding priority that did not exist for the previous one.

It is not a hypothetical problem. Shub Faujdar, a Singapore career strategist who advises everyone from fresh graduates to family office principals, describes artificial intelligence reshaping the job market and pushing the value of work toward what only people can do: identity, connection, judgement. Reskilling at that scale is beyond what any employer will fund on its own, which is precisely the shape of a problem philanthropy exists to take on.

And as a subject the sector now teaches. Singapore’s Good Soil Foundation ran the third edition of its next-generation philanthropy leadership programme at a Hong Kong university in August 2026, themed “Art + AI for Social Good”. It drew 103 participants from Singapore, mainland China, Hong Kong, the United States, the United Kingdom, Thailand and Kenya, across five days covering artificial intelligence, leadership, social innovation and the arts. Earlier editions ran at Singapore universities.

The largest concrete money is in India. Sunil and Romesh Wadhwani committed US$30 million over ten years to Wadhwani AI, a non-profit that embeds artificial intelligence into government service delivery, precisely the kind of unproven, decade-long bet neither governments nor markets will make.

None of this is a fondness for technology for its own sake. They expect measurement, and data is how you get it.

What next-generation philanthropists in Asia fund

The causes shift, and they shift consistently.

The previous generation concentrated on education and health: safe, legible, close to home, and hard for anyone in the family to object to. The Stanford Social Innovation Review research found the succeeding generation moving into arts, culture, the environment and civil rights, categories that carry a degree of social and political risk their parents avoided.

Three themes recur. Climate and the environment, usually framed as a systems problem rather than a conservation one. Mental health, which barely registered as a fundable category a generation ago. And the social consequences of automation, which is new enough that most family foundations have no category for it.

Hillary Tjioe, a next-generation changemaker from an Indonesian business family, is a clean example of the pattern. She was taken to orphanages as a child to hand out books and stationery, and now works on mental health, wildlife conservation and environmental sustainability with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Spirit of Enterprise and Junior Chamber International. Her test is simple: “If you can’t help the people around you, how can you help the world?”

Southeast Asia is not Northeast Asia

Most research on this subject is about Korea, Japan and China. It is good research and it does not describe Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia or the Philippines. This matters because advisers keep applying findings from one to the other.

In Northeast Asia the story is often reputational: heirs to large industrial fortunes using philanthropy to repair or extend a family name. Kyung Sun Chung, grandson of Hyundai’s founder, built Root Impact and a social-enterprise campus in Seoul. Allen Liang of Sany Group runs evidence-based grantmaking through the Sany Foundation. These are large, institutional, legacy-conscious projects attached to industrial dynasties several generations deep.

Southeast Asia looks different in three specific ways. The fortunes are younger, often first or second generation rather than third or fourth, so there is less accumulated reputation to manage. The families are smaller and the decision-making is correspondingly less formal. And Singapore’s concentration of family offices means the next generation frequently works through professional structures from the beginning rather than building them later, which is why donor-advised funds land differently here than they do in Seoul or Tokyo.

If you are reading regional research, check which Asia it is about before you act on it.

What to strengthen

The second row is the specific trap for this generation, and it is worth spelling out. Demanding proof is the right instinct. Applied too early, it defunds exactly the unproven, patient work that family money is uniquely able to back. Governments will not fund what is unproven. Markets will not underwrite returns they cannot see. If family capital also says no, nobody is left to say yes.

Questions the next generation asks

Who is a modern day philanthropist?

Someone who funds the cause behind a problem rather than only relieving it, usually over years, and usually with a view on what success would look like. In Asia the modern version is increasingly a second or third generation family member applying business habits (targets, evidence, review) to the family’s giving.

Which generation donates the most?

Older generations give more in absolute terms because they hold more wealth. Younger donors give a higher share of their income and are far more likely to give time, skills and public advocacy alongside money. In Asia the question is about to be settled by inheritance rather than earning.

How much wealth is passing to the next generation in Asia?

An estimated US$2.5 trillion by 2030, a figure published by the Asia Philanthropy Circle and used widely across the sector.

What is a donor-advised fund, and why do next-gen donors use them?

A giving account held at a sponsoring organisation. You contribute, take the tax treatment at that point, and recommend grants out over time while the balance stays invested. Next-generation donors favour them because they provide a real budget and real decision-making authority without the board, staff and filings a private foundation requires. In Singapore the Community Foundation of Singapore operates them.

What do next-generation philanthropists in Asia fund?

Climate and the environment, mental health, conservation, and the social consequences of automation. Their parents concentrated on education and health.

Is AI being used in philanthropy, or is it just talk?

Both. The largest concrete example in the region is Wadhwani AI, an Indian non-profit embedding AI into government service delivery, backed by a US$30 million ten-year family commitment. Most family use is far smaller and more mundane: measurement, reporting and donor communication. The sector is also starting to teach it. Good Soil Foundation’s 2026 next-generation programme was themed “Art + AI for Social Good”.

How do families bring the next generation into giving?

Usually badly, and usually late. The families that manage it hand over real decisions early, which means a defined budget and the authority to spend it, rather than a seat on a board that meets twice a year. A donor-advised fund is a common way to do this without restructuring anything.

If you are the one inheriting

The useful question is not which vehicle to set up. It is what you want to be true in ten years that is not true now, and what evidence would tell you that you are getting there.

Answer that and the structure follows. A donor-advised fund if you want a real budget and real decisions without the machinery. Impact investing if the problem has a business model attached. A giving circle if you need peers more than you need control. A foundation if you need permanence and staff. Your own programme if the thing you want does not exist yet. Answer it badly and you will inherit your parents’ portfolio with a dashboard bolted on.

Next-generation philanthropists in Asia inherit more than money. They inherit a set of commitments someone else made, for reasons that may no longer hold, to organisations that may no longer be the right ones. Deciding which of those to keep is the first real act of philanthropy, and most people skip it because reviewing your parents’ choices feels like criticising them.

Sources

• UBS, Four trends for Next Gen philanthropists, 2025, including the billionaire survey figures on next-generation involvement in planning
• Stanford Social Innovation Review, Next-Generation Philanthropy, Spring 2019, covering Kyung Sun Chung, Daisuke Kan, Allen Liang and Niu Ben
• Asia Philanthropy Circle, Intergenerational Approaches to Philanthropy
• Philanthropy Asia Alliance, Philanthropy as Risk Capital in Asia, 18 May 2026, drawing on 37 interviews and ten case studies across 13 economies, including the Wadhwani AI commitment
• Wealth Management Institute, Top Philanthropy Trends in Asia 2025, Philanthropy Guide Issue 07, February 2025
• Singapore Economic Development Board, with the Wealth Management Institute and the Private Banking Industry Group, guide to donor-advised funds
• Good Soil Foundation, next-generation philanthropy leadership programme, August 2026
• Business & Philanthropy Forum interviews with Poppy Zidan Chen, Nishtha Agarwal, Hillary Tjioe, Radhika Bajoria and Shub Faujdar

Related: Family philanthropy in Asia: how giving works